surveillance

President Obama is preparing to announce a plan to scrap the government's systematic collection of bulk phone records as part of a far-reaching overhaul of the National Security Agency's controversial electronic surveillance activities.

Senator Rand Paul assailed President Barack Obama and other government leaders over recent surveillance disclosures and called for a congressional investigation of possible spying abuses during a brief speech before cheering students at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Republican senator from Kentucky on Wednesday used his platform at the historically liberal campus to chide "the nation's first African-American president" for allowing the alleged spying abuses to occur with "no compunction," even though Martin Luther King Jr. and other black heroes were once targets of illegal government surveillance.

Paul also called for federal lawmakers to create a special committee to investigate allegations raised by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California that CIA agents secretly searched Senate computers.